Zwane welcomes AmaZulu’s first away win

AmaZulu coach Arthur Zwane is relieved after they registered their first win away this season in the Betway Premiership with a 3-0 victory over struggling Chippa United at Buffalo City Stadium in East London.

A brace by Hendrick Ekstein and a goal by Athini Mqokolo were enough to secure Usuthu their first away win, while piling more misery on the bottom-placed Chippa.

The win also moved Usuthu to fifth on the log table, and Zwane said the plan had been to end their poor away record and he was happy they had achieved that.

“We came here with one thing in mind. We needed to change things in terms of us going away, we’ve been bad travelers,” Zwane stated.

“This is our first game winning away from home. We’ve had opportunities in the past. We actually had about three [opportunities before this one against Kaizer Chiefs, Sekhukhune and Magesi, where we scored first but allowed the opposition to come back and equalise.

“So, we came into this game wanting to make sure that we score first, [and] make sure that we don’t concede. I think we started very slow. In the space of 10 minutes, we could have conceded two goals, but that was a wake-up call for us and we started raising our game.”

Usuthu will look to build on that when they host Polokwane City at Princess Magogo Stadium tomorrow at 7.30pm.

Despite winning 3-0, Zwane highlighted areas where he thinks they still need to improve ahead of their fixture against Rise and Shine.

“We still have a long way to go. We are still a work in progress. We will take one game at a time. We don’t want to think about other things right now. We have another game on Tuesday and we need to make sure we are ready,” he said.

“We defended better, but we could have done better in some areas of decision making in the middle of the park, trying to connect with our 10s as early as possible to create more scoring opportunities.”

Sowetan